Ridiculous Restrictions For Extended Rest

When I sat down to write my RPG Maker Common Event for extended rest, I already knew what I wanted the code to do, it was just a matter of putting it to the page. The event had to restore the characters’ health, it had to advance the game clock six hours, and it had to adjust the lighting as appropriate.

Since then, “Change Light” and “Advance Clock” have been spun off into their own Common Events so they can be accessed remotely without touching extended rest, which leaves us with the event that I’m going to discuss now – the Extended Rest.

The basic effect removes character fatigue (nine points), restores health to maximum (but not “mana”), and calls the events to advance the clock six hours and make changes to the light as appropriate for the time of day. What makes the even interesting, maybe special, is the ridiculous restrictions that must be met first.

First, whenever the lighting changes (in a separate event), a pair of switches also change, to reflect “day” and “night.” Whenever one goes on, the other goes off. Since RPG Maker is funny that way, it doesn’t check for “off” switches, only looking for “on” switches, so I have to double up in circumstances like this.

This image actually comes from the Wikipedia article about sleep deprivation, which I read as part of my research for this event.

The first requirement for rest is that it is night time, i.e. dark. That effectively cuts down the amount of time in which the player can trigger an extended rest to about half the day, during the evening hours and night (about 10 hours total).

The second requirement is that the character must not have taken an extended rest within the last twelve hours. This is mainly to prevent players from abusing the system to make time travel quickly, but also to prevent players from grinding experience by taking on lots of combat encounters and resting.

Those two set up the “time frame” in which the character can rest.

The third requirement is that the character have amassed a significant amount of fatigue. I like to think of fatigue as a sort of inverted healing surge – whenever a character uses a minor healing effect, whether it’s taking a water break, drinking a potion, or using healing magic, they accumulate fatigue.

More about fatigue later.

The fourth requirement is that the character have not amassed too much fatigue. Since I had this glorious idea of “counting up” healing surges, it occurred to me the player could potentially abuse the system to go for days without sleep. At a certain point, the character becomes “overtired” and can’t take a normal extended rest.

Assuming all of these conditions are met, the player can use the “bedroll” item from their inventory, a free, non-consumable item, as many times as they like for what is figuratively “free healing.” All it costs is time.